All Your Organ Are Belong to Us: UK Considers Opt-Out Organ Donation

Great Britain is considering opt-out organ donation. It’d be the opposite of the current system: instead of people signing organ donation agreements, doctors would assume that, unless they’d formally indicated otherwise, people wanted to donate their organs.

The potential policy reversal was prompted by the UK’s organ shortage: the New Scientist reports that of 8,000 people who need organs each year, only 3,000 get them. Meanwhile, countries that switched to opt-out donation have experienced a 25 to 30 percent jump in organ availability.

I’m not sure how I feel about this. If I had a vote, I’d probably support opt-out, but with a queasy feeling: the philosophical implication is that one’s body fundamentally belongs to the state. Even if the state is good-natured enough to give it back to you upon request, that’s still creepy — but not creepy enough to outweigh the benefits.